While your video reviews are really cool and you should definitely keep doing them, I think you should have some sort of a sign-off at the end of them. The way it just cuts is really abrupt. You know, something simple like along the lines of "I'm Anand Shimpi and this has been the Eee pad Transformer Prime" or something. It'd add a little polish.

"...when I first started attending industry events I noticed everyone always introduced themselves as Name from Publication. It always rubbed me the wrong way. If I'm asking a question, and my question is appropriately phrased, the publication I write for is irrelevant information."Reply

In asking the question at an industry event, I agree with your view and Anand's. Its a really KISS MY BUTT thing to do, like should you get a difference answer because who is asking?

But this is about the video. A proper closing (perhaps with a fade to black) would be nicer and more polished. Even the video editor in Windows7 can handle such jobs easily - and I think his Macbook can as well.

Also, his video can be embedded onto other sights, people may not know WHO is talking or where it came from.

Also... OMG! He lost his hair! I remember about 10 years ago when he had... hair, on HIS HEAD!! Put a wig on man, please!!

Don't take it personal Anand... I knew I would be balding when I was a teenager and my hairline started thinning in my mid-20s. I tried that Rogaine (sp?) crap for about 2 days, but that sticky nasty stuff felt horrible and the IDEA of putting sticky crap on my head every day for the rest of my life (at about $25 a month) seemed stupid.

I shaved my head that day. And I keep it shaved. I've haven't seen my curls in years, I don't need a comb. Makes me look a bit tough too :)

PS: Asus has done a great job with their tablets... It amazing how HP, RIM, Toshiba and others have screwed up.Reply

To be honest, there was about another 30 seconds at the end of the video that ended up being cut out which contained a more gradual sign off. I appreciate the feedback for sure :)

I try to do these things in one take, it significantly reduces editing time and helps me get them done given the already insane schedule we have to work on at times. This one suffered as a result but I'll do my best to avoid the abrupt ending happening again in the future :)

I read elsewhere that engineering samples of Tegra 3 weren't performing as much better as Nvidia originally expected them to, due to the cores and GPU being constrained for memory bandwidth. I don't know of them changing this in the original design. I'm curious how much ICS will improve T3 performance with its better multithreading and better GPU acceleration, and how much comes down to all the elements competing for bandwidth or some other hardware limitation? Reply

I guess we should not have expected a non apple slanted review from such a mac fanboy site. I dispair for tech journalism when the point becomes less about an honest unbiased review and more about ones allegiance to apple.Nice try though to sound unbiased though, stating that it is a much improved tablet, your apple bias showed through though when you indicated you felt that it was only in comparison to other Androids and that it was still below anything Mac.

The lesson I learned don't come to Anandtech.com when you want an honest unbiased review.Reply

What parts of this came across as biased? To me it seemed all the facts were laid out impartially, and they put effort into correcting the old battery life measurements as well as promised performance updates when ICS hits. If everything comes back to the iPad, its for a reason, like it or not its still the standards bearer for these tablets, and I'm a hardcore Android user. I think the Prime will be better than the iPad personally when ICS hits, but the review is based on current software of course. Reply

It's important to show how it performs against the iPad, especially with regards to battery life. Most people don't care about android vs iOS, they just want a media consumption device, and will therefore choose the device that allows them to do that better.

Second, the numbers for battery life are in Apple's favor. It would be biased to ignore them.

Sounds to me like you would be better served by going to an Android fanboy website.Reply

You are a fool druter. I and others do not know WHAT you think you read or watched.

A) Anand isn't much of a tablet user (AFAIK from his previous articles)

B) He uses all kinds of technology - he does have the right to use what he wants for his personal uses, no? He uses AMD and intel for his own servers and in general - has kept standards pretty good on this sight.

C) All devices WILL compare market leaders, including the iPad. With what is on the market TODAY from Samsung, ASUS, Toshiba, etc - None of them have the battery or GPU (graphics) performance of the 9 month old iPad2 and some are below that of an iPad1 especially when it comes to battery life.

D) "below anything mac"?? he didn't compare the TF-Prime to any Mac. Apple only has one type of tablet on the market and its NOT a Macintosh. He stated the simple fact that tablets DO NOT replace actual notebooks. That is true if the iPad2 as well.

E) Use the best tool for the job or personal preference and budget. Simple as that, eh? I build my own desktops, own ThinkPad notebooks and have an iPad. My dislike for apple is the same for Microsoft, so it just doesn't matter.

I have an Ipad 2 and an Android Razr Smartphone. The equipment may be better on the Android side but the experience is better on the IPad side. If I want to save $$, Andriod is the way to go. In my opinion for the money a $200-$350 Android tablet is the best value. If I'm spending $600 on a tablet, I'd go Apple.Reply

"Being able to watch 4-6 full length movies on a plane without worrying about your battery is a pretty nice feature."

Technically, it's great. But that implies ripped movies and an international flight. A core function of the Department of Homeland Security is to prevent such activity. So you'd have to worry about more than the battery. But at least you could be sure that none of the other people getting on the plane had violated any copy-protection.Reply

Or, for example renting 4-6 movies on the Google Market app and docking them on your device. That's what I did when they were doing the top 10 for $1. Rented 4 or 5 of them and then docked/pinned them on my TF101 so that I could make sure I can watch them at any time. Reply

First off, I am very happy for your thoroughness. You always try your best in your reviews. My trouble is with your CONSTANT comparison to mac book air. How expensive is your mac book air, and what processor and hd etc come with it? Even if you take the 64 GB model TF-Prime, you are still easily a couple hundred under MBA. Also, as you mentioned, one is a tablet + dock , while the other is designed, albeit very very well, as a laptop. Now the comparison to netbooks is one I can understand, but the constant comparison to MBA I feel degrades from true evaluation. One thing I found funny, is that even with the comparison to a system that is much more expensive, it still is able to keep up some.

"Now the comparison to netbooks is one I can understand, but the constant comparison to MBA I feel degrades from true evaluation."

I think that comparisons like this are actually very helpful, since there are a decent number of people who want to know whether they need a MBA/Ultrabook, or whether they can save $400-$500 and use a tablet. And, particularly because tablets are still pretty new (as mainstream devices, anyway), it's also useful to delineate the boundaries between laptops and tablets.

"One thing I found funny, is that even with the comparison to a system that is much more expensive, it still is able to keep up some."

This is a very important point for some users - and a point that wouldn't have been made but for comparing the tablet to a MBA.Reply

A lot of semantics there. True that A5 is probably slower than Tegra 3, but also from the article there is no significant performance difference between an iPad 2 vs Transformer Prime. The OS and platform do count.

I'm a bit disappointed too though. I really thought the quad core Tegra 3 would be at least 40% or so faster than similar clocked A9 based systems just because of the extra 2 processors, but apparently not. I'm thinking maybe Android isn't quite optimized for more than 2 cores yet.Reply

Is it now the norm to compare products based on their size rather than ability and, most importantly, price? A Netbook probably retails for $250-$400. This thing retails for $650 (with dock)? I don't see how this in any way compares to a netbook. Sorry.Reply

It isn't fair comparing the two because the ASUS has a 10.1" screen at 1280x800, not a 9.7" screen at 1024x768. Thats a 0.78MP screen vs a 1.0MP screen. It has to render 20% more pixels and on top of that the screen is larger.Reply

Thanks for doing the follow up on this, demonstrating once again why you're the best in the business.

Hopefully Asus will learn from this; if you weren't as thorough as you are they would have ended up with their only review here being unnecessarily negative. Maybe they'll give folks more lead time in the future!Reply

So there is just some improvement and not a great deal of improvement. Wonder if it would be better if Nvidia put two 1.8Ghz cores rather than 4 1.4Ghz core, then the end result in performance would be way better with slight penalty on battery life ?.

I do think it is commendable of you to update your original review with these updated tidbits. However, I do wonder when it comes to your gripes, particularly with multitasking.

I agree with the limitations of Honeycomb's multitasking, but what are we comparing it too? Your review was specifically comparing it to a netbook, so your criticism is fair if we're comparing it to Win XP... but compared to other mobile OS', it's the best on offer (admittedly, I have not tried the Playbook's implementation of multitasking which looks like it may be more comparable to a desktop experience).

Currently, I think heavy users run into serious limitation regardless of which tablet platform they are using. I think I was hoping for quad core to change this as well tho... so that's disappointing. Maybe ICS?

Your comments on higher clocked, dual-core 28nm chips possibly being comparable in performance to Tegra 3 gave me reason to pause as well! Simply b/c I fear that Android 4.0 is still being optimized for dual core devices, not quad core... Because unless things change at CES, most new mobile devices being announced for 2012 still have dual cores!Reply

Would love to see an update to your review now that ICS has been on this tablet for awhile. I personally haven't touched my iPad2 since I received my TP. I use it in place of my laptop and netbook as well. I rarely have to pick up anything else. I am a road warrior with a Verizon MiFi and Sprint Hotspot on my phone and always have internet connectivity and this thing is always with me.

Games:

Between onlive, emulators and all the gaming options from Android (including the great Tegrazone games) this makes the case for a mobile gaming platform with console quality graphics but also the dead simple casual gaming making this a great fit for both types of gamers. Onlive is excellent on this platform btw.

Productivity/Web:

I just recently added Onlive Desktop to my subscription and I have full blown Office at my finger tips along with Internet Explorer. It is limited to the MS stack on the desktop, but I find that good enough. Native to the tablet I use Polaris Office, Adobe, Firefox, Chrome, Android Browser and Dolphin. I literally have not found office content that I can't access. The same is true for web content including Flash support.

Media:

All the usual app suspects are here. Netflix, Pandora, Hulu + (installs but doesn't officially support the device takes a little bit of know-how to get it working. ie developer mode and config files.) One must have app for Android here MX Video Player It plays all my years of movie collecting, works as good as VLC on Windows/Linux.

I also have this working with my ActiveSync Mail server for my corporation and actively use this device for presentations and note taking in customer meetings.

I only hope they continue to develop and support the Transformer platform and I only see a bright future for this tablet.

What a great review. Very detailed and complete. I do agree a signoff would be nice. I have had a little trouble finding out about battery "memory", I didn't catch that in the review, which would have been nice. Finally found what I think is correct on Asus web site. It is best to let the tablet discharge completely and then recharge it. I will definitely follow you. Great job.Reply